China’s regulations look good on paper but the absence of an independent judiciary means the rules are sometimes applied inconsistently.

This is an op-ed by Patricia Adams, economist and executive director of Probe International, a China watchdog.

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In January, Canada’s Food Inspection Agency and China’s customs authority signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance co-operation on food safety and animal and plant health. Prime Minister Mark Carney framed it as part of a bilateral reset aiming for smoother trade. On paper, it establishes technical working groups, information-sharing and biennial meetings. In practice, it asks Canadian consumers and regulators to trust a food system with a well-documented history of repeated, sometimes lethal, failures. Article content Article content

China’s food-related problems are neither ancient history nor isolated incidents. One in 10 meals consumed in the country is estimated to be cooked with “gutter oil” recycled from restaurant waste and sewers. Cats are picked up from the streets and sold as pork or mutton for skewers and sausage stuffing. Cadmium-contaminated rice from polluted regions like Hunan is common. Weight-loss supplements sold as “natural” have contained undeclared sibutramine, a banned drug linked to heart risks.

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The 2008 melamine scandal in infant formula killed at least six babies and sickened hundreds of thousands, with officials delaying warnings to protect the Beijing Olympics’ image. In 2014, expired and spoiled meat from a Shanghai supplier reached major fast-food chains across Asia. In 2024, major grain and oil firms were exposed using uncleaned fuel tankers to transport edible oils — a cost-cutting practice that had become routine. Article content

More recently, over 200 children were hospitalized after eating lead-tainted food in a northwest China kindergarten. Just last month, authorities found vendors were using kidney- and liver-damaging sedatives in fish transport tanks to keep fish from losing scales, then telling their customers the motionless fish were merely “sleeping.”

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China’s government claims its food is beyond reproach, pointing to its Food Safety Law (enacted in 2009, strengthened in 2015) and President Xi Jinping’s “Four Strictest” requirements: precise standards, strict administration, harsh accountability and grave punishment. On paper, penalties include large fines, punitive damages, criminal charges and even execution. But corruption rules. The Communist Party and those favoured by it freely disregard the legal system.

Enforcement is selective, driven more by political loyalty, GDP targets and social stability than consistent consumer protection. Coverups are often shielded. If necessary, producers re-brand and relocate, while high-profile crackdowns can seem performative. Without an independent judiciary and constraints on Party power, food safety is not just a technical but a systemic governance failure. Incentives to cut corners for profit under competitive and political pressure endure.

Those in privileged positions have for decades avoided the foods most Chinese are resigned to eat. Since the 1960s, Communist Party officials have sourced high-quality, uncontaminated, carefully tested “special provision” foods for themselves and their families through the tegong system of secret farms. Private companies also provide safe food for their employees as perks. Foxconn runs its own tested, traceable farms to avoid pesticides, heavy metals, parasites and other contaminants in their company canteens.

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Canadians have reason for caution. Access to Information investigations have revealed that between January 2017 and early 2019, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency flagged nearly 900 shipments from China over contaminants such as metals found in minced garlic, gumballs and haddock fillets; glass in bamboo shoots and sesame paste noodles; parasites in wild cod fillets; and heavy metals in candy. Allergens, including peanuts, were found in 584 products. And 85 cases involved “Product misrepresentation/authenticity.”

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Despite a pattern of widespread contamination, Canada denied entry to only four shipments. The U.S., which imports roughly 10 times as much food from China as Canada, refused entry to 1,828 Chinese shipments during the same period — more than 40 times as many. In the EU, China ranks first for food import safety alerts and refusals. Canada’s ranking of China is not available because, unlike its counterparts in other western nations, the CFIA does not release comprehensive data of its refusals of food imports.

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Under the new MOU, Chinese-owned or joint-venture operations will function inside Canada, their supply chains extending back to China for ingredients or methods. Though laden with language to reassure Canadian trade negotiators, the MOU does not magically sanitize those relationships. If a Canadian factory sources additives or raw materials through the same opaque networks that produced gutter oil or melamine milk, Canadian consumers will eat the risk.